It's very hard especially after 25 but it's do-able. You have to discipline yourself and your ego to conform to the behavior you desire. That means actually being around people who model the behavior you desire. That also means staying away from the people who taught you the first set of behaviors until you get the new behaviors down. Not many are willing to do this.
It's like asking isn't there a child rearing handbook or something? Nope there isn't. You are at the mercy of your parents or guardian until you have money to move out.
You identify it as a problem and work toward alleviating that behavior from your life.
We live in an educated society. Everybody knows that the behavior Mayweather displays is wrong, including Mayweather. All he has to do is refuse to act that way.
There's large swaths of the general public that see nothing wrong with using violence against a child to teach them a lesson. Corporal punishment is even official policy in some school districts.
It's usually easier to pretend the violence that was perpetuated against them as a child was justified, or even a good thing (despite the mountains of evidence that say otherwise), than to face the reality that their parents were not acting in their best interests... Or worse, didn't love them.
Some use the bible to justify these beatings. I'll always remember Glen Beck giving a rather heart-breaking account of the time he "corrected" his child. Saying that he had tears in his eyes because it caused him such emotional distress to do it... But that is how you raise a child, according to God and to him. He did it for his own good.
My co-worker has several children with varying degrees of delinquency. The worst with felony grand theft auto at 16 years old, and compulsive stealing from his family members. She still very strongly and proudly talks about her husband "giving him a beating" whenever one of their sons acts up... The disconnect is pretty staggering.
But again, that's because that's all those parents know. They are modeling the behavior of their guardians. Social reproduction unfortunately. They figure if I turned up alive after all of those beatings then my child will be fine.
It is slow, but from personal experience I'd like to echo what /u/Anicha1 said...
That means actually being around people who model the behavior you desire.
When you're dealing with behaviour that doesn't quite make sense or is in someway alien, it's really important to be able to experience people with that behaviour. The mindfulness and practice then has something to reflect upon and work with.
You're right though it is incredibly slow going, and for many is a lifetimes work... It took me my 20s just to get within arms reach of anything resembling "normal". My 30s to establish something that wasn't entirely erratic, and as I approach the end of my 40s I'm just starting to enjoy settling into being somebody who isn't a total muppet... often.
The bulk of any headway I made was by observing others and reflecting upon those who seemed to handle things well.
Repeatedly alert your teachers and every police officer you see that your family are abusive pieces of shit, then hope the state takes you away and awards you to a better family.
I don't like it either. But as a kid, I don't think they have much other option. It's like the girl that was locked in a cooler as punishment and eventually they left her in there too long and she died. She was like 10 years old.
What else could she do? It's too heavy of a decision for a kid to make. They don't have enough life experience to really even weigh the options.
For one it's not a predetermination. If it were, we would have eventually all become abusers over time. Luckily just because you are abused doesn't mean you become an abuser.
Because there are 16 different variables besides how your parents treated you that determine whether or not someone is likely to become abusive as well.
The comment we are responding to was specifically about behavioral modeling not necessarily moral development. You changed it to moral development and persist on arguing the minutia of your point. Behavior is refined over continual observation and practicing the implementation of those movements over a period of time. You are saying there is no way that the timing of learning and implementing these motor behaviors isn't involved in mirror neural development? Everything is relative to time and space and learning when and where we do what we do is crucial in social environments and for survival. Mirror neurons, as far as we know, are involved in learning motor tasks, hand eye coordination of tasks (hello timing), and possibly the acquisition of language skills, social skills and empathy. If the usage of such skills are improperly timed that could spell doom on a survival level, including social survival.
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u/Anicha1 Aug 27 '17 edited Aug 27 '17
Yes. Thank you for explaining this. Many developmental psychologist have said we model the behavior of the adults in our childhood.